Humanism and Transhumanism Fred Baumann

Humanism and Transhumanism Fred Baumann The name of the movement known as “transhumanism” may suggest that it arises out of humanism. At the very least, it is a descendant of what was once known as humanism, and could be seen as just one more utopian humanism. But the “trans” is the operative part of the term, and it should be taken seriously. Transhumanism is not simply utopian in the same way as the humanisms of Marx or B. F. Skinner; rather, it is qualitatively dif- ferent in that it “goes beyond,” avowedly disregarding and leaving behind human beings themselves — the very beings that were the central concern of all previous humanisms. The history of these humanisms is extraordinarily rich and complex. But because transhumanism cheerfully “transcends” all of it, we can cheerfully omit much of the detail here. In brief, humanism meant look- ing at the world from the point of view and the interests of the human being, as opposed to the subhuman (that is, the material or natural) or the superhuman (that is, the divine). In its most utopian forms, inspired by the technical possibilities of applied natural science, humanism sought the utter transformation of the world to fit human needs. Marx’s communism, however much he denied that it was utopian, is a good case in point. Marx understood that human beings would change in the new communist world — but he believed that the change would be of their own choice and in their own power. The world of communism would in fact be a realm of freedom instead of one in which external necessity ruled: a freely developed culture that would put an end to class war. But once it was taken seriously and developed further, the prospect of fully using human freedom to conquer nature evolved into another, and in some ways opposite, prospect: the perfect accommodation of human beings to nature. Consider the utopian vision of B. F. Skinner, the mid- twentieth century father of behaviorist psychology. In his 1948 novel Walden Two, Skinner depicted a community of that name completely controlled by operant conditioning. Everyone in it, without exception, is happy. They have all been conditioned so as to respond perfectly to their constraints, and they only face constraints that are necessary. Living in Fred Baumann is a professor of political science at Kenyon College. This essay is adapted from a lecture given at Colgate University’s Center for the Arts and Humanities. 68 ~ The New Atlantis Copyright 2010. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. Humanism and Transhumanism what reminds one of Rabelais’s fictional aristocratic abbey of Thélème, they pursue knowledge, art, culture, and leisure in perfectly governed harmony (rule by experts, no democracy here). There is an unintentional creepiness about Walden Two — not just because the universal sunniness of the testimonials makes one wonder about drugs in the water or inquisitorial dungeons beneath the ground, but, above all, because of the apparent absence in any of the happy Waldensians (with the possible exception of the maladjusted founder) of what we might call “inwardness.” For Skinner, it appears that the demands of the body can be met by comfort, and the demands of the soul by interesting things to do and find out about. Not just democracy, but also capitalism, the family, and formal education are considered antiquated. Institutional religion, needless to say, is absent as well. Remarkable also in its absence is the whole realm of reflection about one’s self, one’s expec- tations of oneself, one’s feelings as they conflict with one’s reasonings, and so forth, giving the book and its project an air of the overly bright, overly defined unreality that one finds in some of the stranger genres of animated film and TV. Perhaps this absence of inwardness is just what you would expect from this exponent of behaviorism — the basic premise of which is to ignore the existence of inwardness. It seems doubtful, however, that this absence in itself played much of a role in the failure of Skinner’s particular brand of utopian humanism. Marx’s utopianism never got far because the historical process that was to lead to it never materialized: the proletariat just wasn’t up to its assigned mission of becoming the salvific, universal class (as Lenin ruefully discovered, its consciousness never got beyond trade unionism). By contrast, the reason that almost nobody attempted Skinner’s brand of utopia was perhaps because its unnerving creepiness hinted at a violation of normal notions of freedom and dignity — notions that Skinner considered outmoded, as he argued in his famous 1971 book Beyond Freedom and Dignity. Moreover, it seems likely that behavioral conditioning might not have had the power to alter people as deeply as Skinner thought. Stronger tools were needed. A New Science, A New Utopia Today, stronger tools than were dreamt of in Skinner’s philosophy are not only imagined but in common use. Mind control through chemistry is a commonplace. The infertile bearing children — sometimes genetically their own, sometimes not — raises no eyebrows, and seems to most like Fall 2010 ~ 69 Copyright 2010. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. Fred Baumann unambiguous good news. Mammals can be cloned, and so, in principle, humans may be too. Some crucial bodily fluids, like insulin, can already be synthetically produced. The possibility of advanced nanotechno- logical machines going inside human bodies, the possibility of linking human brains and nervous systems to computer networks, the possibility, in short, of the complete overcoming of the distinction between the human and the mechanical — all of these may be on the horizon, and the most enthusiastic proponents of such projects, like the eminent inventor Ray Kurzweil, keep emphasizing how soon it is all coming. After all, as Kurzweil (whose name in German literally means “short time,” seeming to imply not only imminence but impatience and mortality) likes to point out, the rate of technological change keeps increasing; we cannot go by our old timelines. In one sense, the new science is merely a continuation of the old. It continues the Baconian project of control over nature for human bet- terment. But at the point that it becomes “transhumanism,” the name indicates that this science has changed its object in the process. When the original humanism allied with science, it did so in order to transform the world to make it suitable for human life. But what if we could, follow- ing Skinner, change human beings to fit the world? Even conceiving of this project would, of course, mean treating human beings as material for transformation. The famous Frankenstein story emerged out of the Romantic, origi- nally Rousseauian, horror at the implications of treating man as mere matter. But the failure of the post-Rousseauian project of “moral freedom,” by which Kant and others sought to overcome the “merely empiri- cal” through the power of the will, ultimately seems to have made possible a new science that accepts reductionist materialism as a matter of course, both as an account of nature and of man. Its followers are remarkably free of the kinds of concerns that plagued those who, from the eighteenth century on, were horrified by the notion of L’homme Machine (man as a machine), popularized by a 1748 book of that title by La Mettrie. A bit of the flavor of the clash between the older view and the new reductionism can be found in an exchange in Commentary magazine. As part of an April 2007 essay called “Science, Religion, and the Human Future,” Leon R. Kass, a University of Chicago professor and former chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics, challenged the materi- alist conception of the human being that denies the immateriality of the soul. One of those criticized, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, replied in a letter published in the July/August 2007 issue alongside a rebuttal 70 ~ The New Atlantis Copyright 2010. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. Humanism and Transhumanism from Kass. Pinker denies Kass’s charge that he reduces mind to brain; mind is, however, “what the brain does” (his emphasis). Therefore, on Pinker’s account, what needs to be studied is the brain, and so is material. Nothing is gained by emotive talk of the “soul,” he says; if all that archaic term refers to is “the software of the brain,” then why not say so and be done with it? If we are computers, then so be it. This reductionism is not in and of itself transhumanism, but it paves the way for it. The new science isn’t squeamish about man as machine; transhumanism goes a step further and embraces man’s becoming a dif- ferent machine, or any number of kinds of machines. If that were to come to pass, even if only among elites, it would be a change of world-historical proportions, because it would mean that the new science was no longer merely seeking to transform the world to suit human beings, but rather transforming human beings into whatever they chose. Liberty and Limitation Contemporary libertarians, viewing society as composed of transactions between autonomous actors, seem to expect that these transformational choices will be individual in nature. But as has been cogently argued by a number of critics, individual choice will probably not be decisive. Once the enhanced set the standards, it will pretty much be impossible for the unen- hanced not to have to try to keep up, if only because their life chances, and ultimately even their continuing recognition as members of society, will be at stake.

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